Wildflower
by flashpenguin
Summary: Morgan confronts Elle about her downward spiral and learns a secret about his partner that changes everything. And he gives her an ultimatum. Written for the CM Fanfic challenge. Inspired by Skylark's song "Wildflower".


_This was one of the most difficult stories I have ever written. Partly because I never cared much for Elle, but mostly because of the subject matter I decided to tackle. Fifteen different ways I tried to approach this story before I realized that Elle had a deep dark secret. The same one every victim of abuse has. And like every victim, Elle made the decision to do what she could to make a difference in the world -until she crossed over to the dark side. I wanted to see how she viewed the world and why she was so eager to walk away from it all. I would like to believe the conversation below is one she could only have with Morgan -her friend and her partner._

_This story was inspired by the Skylark song "Wildflower". You can find it on YOUTUBE. Partial lyrics below._

**_This story is dedicated to JWynn -I am so glad to have you back. You are truly a fighter. God bless you always.  
_**___

_Be careful how you touch her f__or she'll awaken, _

_And sleep's the o__nly freedom that she knows._

_And when you walk into her eyes_

_You won't believe the way she's always_

_Paying for a debt she never owes;_

_And a silent wind still blows_

_That only she can hear, a__nd so she goes…._

_Let her cry, for she's a lady;_

_Let her dream, for she's a child._

_Let the rain fall down upon her;_

_She's a free and gentle flower growing wild.  
**_**_

**Wildflower**

It still haunted her every waking moment. And her every sleeping moment-at least the moments she could snatch to escape the hell of what happened, what she had done, and where she had been.

She had been in hell due to betrayal. Betrayal by those she trusted most.

Now she wasn't sure where exactly she was. She didn't believe in a heaven or a hell, so maybe this was purgatory-the area for lost souls, the ones who were forsaken and forgotten, who were too good for hell but not good enough for eternal rewards. She truly felt forsaken.

Taking a long sip of her scotch, Elle gave a wry grin at the irony. The one thing she didn't believe in made perfect sense. And it would since her life had fallen apart. Slowly at first, it began with a piece here and there and then like an earthquake it completely collapsed at her feet. Every dream, every wish, every achievement no longer adorned the wall she called her life.

But she had gotten her revenge. She had taken the initiative and done what everyone was afraid to do: she had banished the demon. Maybe not for herself, but for other women. She couldn't save the ones who had gone before, but the ones who did survive could begin to live again.

And she could live with it.

As long as she didn't have to think about it.

Thank God for scotch.  
**_**

Morgan pulled up in the empty space next to Elle's car. He hadn't been sure if she was going to be home, and maybe he should have called first, but he wanted the element of surprise on his side.

Getting out, he closed the door and set the alarm. Making his way up the stairs to the landing, he crossed over to Elle's apartment door. Knocking lightly, he waited. Nothing. Again, only a little harder. Maybe she wasn't home.

Turning to leave, he heard the chain and locks being released. Squaring his shoulders, he stood and waited as the door swung open.

"Derek," Elle greeted her tone neutral. "I didn't know you were coming over."

"I didn't know myself. May I come in?" He saw the hesitation in her eyes. "We need to talk."

"Okay." Holding the door open wider, she let him step inside. Then she closed and locked it. "Can I get you something to drink? I have scotch and scotch."

Morgan watched her closely. "Guess I'll have to take a scotch then." Settling down on the couch, he waited for her to come back from the kitchen with a glass.

Elle poured a generous portion and thrust the glass toward him. Eyebrow raised, Morgan eyed the glass and his co-worker. "I was planning on driving home tonight, but I can handle it."

Leaning against the couch cushion, Morgan sipped the fiery liquid but didn't say a word. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask her, but he knew that if he pushed too hard too fast, she would run. Elle had been thru a lot; she didn't need an interrogation. But he could see she was spinning out of control and he had to at least make an effort to save her even if she couldn't save herself.

"You weren't at work today," he commented, trying to make small talk. He had to do something to fill the deafening silence that permeated the room. He could handle the dark. The bolted doors prevented the outside world from barging in to her self-imposed sanctuary. Even the scotch she was trying to kill herself with, but he couldn't stand silence.

"I didn't think you would notice."

"I notice when my friend isn't there."

Elle gave him a tight lipped look that was supposed to be a grin but resembled a grimace. "Is that what I am to you? A _friend_?"

Morgan tried to analyze her voice. It was so dead. So cold. Just like her eyes. "You know you are. You always will be. That's why I'm here tonight. Elle, I'm worried about you; something isn't right and I need to know what is wrong so I can help you fix it."

"What is wrong? I got shot Derek; _that's_ what is wrong!" She downed the liquid, poured some more, and stood up. She walked over to the window. Keeping her back to him, she peered out thru the crack in the heavy curtains. "I thought a person's home was supposed to be their sanctuary, the place they could go to get away from the evils of the world. It's not true. There is no safe place."

"It's not always like that. It could have happened to anyone."

"I am not anyone! I'm an FBI agent; a law enforcement agent. I am trained to defend people from the very person I was unable to protect myself from."

"They all aren't like him; he was good. Maybe the best UNSUB we ever encountered -I know that I wasn't prepared for what he had in store for us. But if I had even guessed for a moment that your life was in danger, that he would have gone over the line…I would have been here."

"That wasn't your responsibility."

"Friends watch out for friends. It's not a responsibility. It's just…" Morgan struggled to fight the right word.

"An obligation? A kind act? Is that why Hotch sent me home?"

"He didn't send you home. It was a mutual decision that he and Gideon made."

Elle turned to face Morgan, her eyes snapping with anger. "Hotch sent me home! He got me shot!"

"Hotch didn't shoot you!"

"He may as well have! He knew that the rules had been broken. He knew that our lives were in danger. He sent me home without protection."

Morgan tried to control his temper. He was there when the call came in, and he had seen Hotch's face at the hospital. But he wanted to see things from Elle's point of view. He had to know where she was coming from.

"Why aren't you blaming Gideon? He is the one who told Hotch to send you home. He made the decision. It was his choice that you leave or else you would have been safe at the BAU."

"Gideon isn't my chief."

"No. He's just a senior agent. But don't let that fact get in the way of your wanting to punish Hotch for a mistake that he is paying for everyday."

"Well, at least I'm not paying alone," Elle quipped sardonically.

Morgan gave up trying to be kind. "You weren't there in the waiting room. Hotch was beside himself trying to get word on your condition. Beating himself up for going against his better judgment. I've never seen him lose control. And they weren't telling us anything. Whether you were alive or dead. All we could do was wait."

"I died Morgan!" Elle shouted. The tears, the pain, the hurt -everything she had bottled up slowly made its way to the surface. "I died. I was dead. And it felt so good. I wasn't scared. There was no pain. No hurt. And I didn't want to come back."

"So why did you?"

"Because I'm a good daughter."

"I don't understand."

"I met my father on the other side. He told me to come back. He ordered me to return. Return to the pain and the hurt; the evil things we have to encounter everyday. I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay so badly."

"Even if he hadn't met you and told you to go back, it would have been out of your hands. The decision wasn't yours."

Elle gave a short laugh thru her tears. "It seems like that is the story of my life. My decisions are wrong, but the ones made for me are even worse. But those are the right ones. It doesn't make sense. When did it become wrong for me to take control over my life? When did I surrender control over my destiny to other people?"

"It's not like that!" Morgan countered.

"Then tell me what it's like because I don't get it. Everyday I have to get up and force myself to go into work. I have to tell myself that I am going to make a difference. That I am going to be better at making decisions for people than the ones people make for me! I have to bargain with myself that when I walk out this door in the morning, I will walk thru it at the end of the day!"

Morgan didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.

"I've never been scared a day in my life. Even when I lost my father. I knew that somehow things were going to be alright. I had to believe that because I promised I would never let anyone go thru what I did."

"I know." And Morgan did. He knew the pain of losing a father to a criminal. He knew the anguish of not being able to do something - and feeling so helpless and out of control.

"I wanted to make him proud of me. I wanted that when I saw him again, he would tell me 'Good job, Elle".

"Did he?"

Elle bit her lip to keep the tears back, but they flowed anyway. "Yeah. He was so proud that he wanted me to come back here. He didn't want to be with me. It was though he knew my deepest secret."

For a long moment the sound of Elle's weeping filled the room. Deep wracking sobs tore from her as she tried to cleanse the anger, sadness, guilt, and loneliness from her past.

"Who was it? Who hurt you?" Morgan asked. It had never occurred to him that Elle would have been a victim, but now that he had time to ponder everything, it made sense. He had had an inkling that she harbored a deep dark secret that she kept buried and hidden. But ever since the shooting, things had changed. He had seen her secret creep out little by little and try to disguise itself as exhaustion, anger and frustration. But he knew it all too well because he still dealt with it every day.

Elle turned away. Shame and anger washed over her features. Hands shaking, she took a sip of her scotch. "No one."

"Bullshit! You think I don't know the pain of keeping a secret so dark and evil that it could not only destroy my life but everyone associated with me? You think I don't know what it's like to cry myself to sleep on the floor of a closet because I didn't feel safe in my bed? You don't think I don't know about building walls to close out everyone but the bad guys -how to use that vulnerability to draw them in and capture them?"

"It's different."

Morgan stood up and walked over to her. "Different? How do you figure? Because I went on to get a football scholarship? That I went on to be a cop? Because I'm a man and you're a woman? Oh, that must be it. But don't let the fact that I have been there -as have many other people- hinder the self pity you have decided to drown yourself in."

Unable to look at Morgan, Elle kept her eyes downcast.

"You knew this and didn't say anything to Hotch when he assigned you to go undercover?" Morgan asked in disbelief.

"I thought I could handle it. I thought I had it buried."

"You _thought_? Did you think about the oath you took to protect and defend? That isn't just for the victims, but for the criminals too. You bitch and complain about how Hotch had a responsibility to protect you from being shot; how he should have known that he was walking you into a trap. You want him to pay for a sin that isn't even his. But you paid him back in full: you lied to him and set him up to take the fall because you weren't strong enough to come clean."

"It's not what you think. I didn't mean to hurt Hotch. I would never put his career at risk!" Elle argued.

"Maybe not consciously, but you should have told him that you were a victim of sexual abuse."

"I couldn't."

"No. You wouldn't."

"No, I couldn't!" she yelled. "I didn't even put it in my file! You're the first person I've ever told. Not even my mother knows."

"That explains why you are so good at profiling sex offenders."

Elle shook her head. "It has nothing to do with profiling; I just know those bastards like the back of my hand. You only have to be sprayed by a skunk once to know what it's like and what their agenda is, so even if you can't avoid it, you're prepared."

"It didn't happen while you're dad was alive."

"No," she whispered. "It started after the funeral." She wiped the tears away with the back of her free hand. "It was my dad's partner. His _partner_. The man who was supposed to have his back took the innocence of his daughter. He stole it like a common criminal and he was supposed to hold up the law!"

"And you never told anyone."

"Who would have believed me Derek? Maybe if he was my uncle, or neighbour, or ice cream vendor then I could have told someone and have been believed. But he was a cop. And I trusted him!"

"Why didn't you tell Hotch you couldn't go undercover? You wouldn't have had to tell him what you told me; you could have said that you weren't ready."

"I thought I was! I wanted to prove that I was stronger than the people who hurt me. And I was…until I looked in the mirror and I saw the women the UNSUB hurt looking back at me. I saw them. The way he held them down and took away every bit of their innocence and security. The way it was done to me. And I wasn't going to let him hurt another woman."

"But you did Elle!" Morgan thundered. "By not telling Hotch, by trying to do this on your own and prove that you were some kind of superwoman, you screwed up everything and let him walk!"

"It wasn't on purpose!"

"It wasn't? You botched the case when you turned on the stereo full blast! All you had to do was stay inside and let him come to you. We would have been there in less than thirty seconds. It was cut and dry. You screwed up!"

"He was going to get away! Just like all the others!"

"So you decided to break protocol and take the law into your own hands? Why?" Morgan asked. Elle had no response as she continued to look at the carpet. Slowly the answer dawned on him.

"You wanted him to walk. You knew exactly what you were doing when you turned on that stereo and gave away your cover."

"You can't understand. He was going to walk anyway."

"No he wasn't. Your stupidity, your selfishness, your…past let him walk! You let him go free because you wanted to get even with Hotch. And you call yourself an FBI agent. I can't believe you and I defend and protect the same laws."

"We do," Elle contradicted.

"Maybe in your alternate universe. But not in mine! No matter what my boss did to wrong me, I would never throw good common sense out of the window because I felt he had to pay. You know that Strauss is looking for any excuse to fire Hotch. You think she wouldn't jump on this if she even suspected? Because you know that Hotch and Gideon had to go to her and clear it so you could go undercover. They put their jobs and reputations on the line. And this is how you pay them back!"

"Because I hate him!" Elle screamed. "I can _never_ forgive him for what he did to me! A thousand years from now I will _still_ hate him! I hope Aaron Hotchner burns in hell!"

Morgan spun around and stepped away. He couldn't bear to look at her. The woman he had defended not more than eight hours earlier, the woman who had held his life in her hands so many times, the woman he had grown to love more than a sister, had betrayed him and the team. For what ever reason- it could never be good enough to wash away the hurt, the pain, the betrayal that was worse than anything he had ever experienced in his life.

Elle couldn't think. Every ounce of her body screamed with pain at the injustice and the wrongness of the whole situation. She had broken protocol and broken the law. She had tried to take it upon herself to right a wrong. But Morgan could never understand. No one had protected her. No one had helped her. She couldn't let someone go thru life with that shame. And she would do it all over again.

"What you did was wrong." Morgan couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"What I did saved many victims. Victims who deserved more than to go thru life shrouded in shame and fear."

"You're a federal agent, Elle, not God. You have no right deciding who gets saved and who gets punished."

Her eyes flew to his and her fingers pressed against her breast bone. "_I don't have that right?_" she sputtered. "Criminals can walk into a house, a car, and a life any damn time they feel and take what they want because they feel it's their right. They have the right to remain silent, to have a lawyer, a judge, and their day in court."

"It's called **'Due Process' **Elle! And you had no right interfering with it," Morgan thundered back.

"I had every right!" she screamed, half mad. "The bullet wound in my flesh gives me that right! The fact that I was shot by a mad man and died twice on the operating table more than gives me that right! Don't you dare stand there and judge me and tell me I have no right! I had the right to be protected, to be safe in my own home; I wasn't, so now I'm returning the favour to women who can't defend themselves."

"So, you're a vigilante now?"

"A defender."

Morgan took a deep breath. There was no way to prepare himself for what he had to ask. There was no way he could prepare himself for her answer. He could go his life without knowing. He wanted to go his whole life without knowing, because to know would change everything. And that change was going to cause him to lose not only his partner, but his best friend.

And it would cause her the same thing. And God knew he didn't want to hurt her. She didn't need the pain of his abandonment on top of everything else she had just been thru.

One more deep breath, Morgan squared his shoulders and turned to face Elle. The pain of the past six months was evident on her features. But he shut that out as he expelled his breath.

"Elle, I need to ask you two questions; questions I don't even want the answers to, but I have to know: Have you deliberately skipped your counseling sessions? And did you deliberately set up and shoot a man in cold blood and lie about it?"

The silence in the room was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.

Elle heard the roar of blood pounding in her ears and for a moment the room began to spin. She wanted to tell him the truth, to make him understand. But she couldn't. And he would never understand the path she had chosen. It was her journey…one she had started years ago when she was a frightened young girl praying for redemption and salvation for a sin she wasn't even guilty of. But she was guilty- guilty of being a woman. Guilty of being strong. Guilty for being alive. There could be no redemption for that. But she was determined to find one…someday.

Morgan thought his heart was going to pound out of his chest. Everything he believed in had just crashed at his feet. The reality he knew was gone, replaced with something he couldn't even begin to try to understand. The person he thought he knew so well was someone he didn't know at all. He felt as though he was being sucked down into some kind of vortex and he couldn't stop it. Elle was drowning and she had tried to take him with her. Still, he waited for her answer.

And time dragged on.

A sense of peace cloaked Elle as she stood straighter against her accuser. Morgan may be her partner and friend, but he had tried to break her. He had tried to destroy her. No more. She was in charge now.

A sense of peace cloaked Morgan as he watched the change in his friend and realized it was over. Officially over.

"Are you going to tell Hotch?" Elle asked coldly, although there was a trace of fear in the tone.

"I didn't come here tonight as a cop, Elle, nor did I come as a federal agent; I came as your friend. I wanted to help; I didn't know what I was going to find. Now I'm sorry that I looked because I can't put it back." Morgan stepped forward. He wanted to see her one more time. He wanted to remember the laughter, the loyalty, the friendship.

"I'm not going to tell Hotch. That's your job, but I can't force you. At this point, as much as I want to arrest you, I can't because you haven't confessed to anything I could use. But I will tell you this: you have twenty-four hours to come clean with Hotch. If you don't, I will not only go to him, but Strauss. And that is a promise."

Elle nodded. Morgan was as good as his word. She had no doubt that he would follow through.

"Good-bye Elle." Morgan leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. "I'm going to miss you." Quickly he made his way to the door. Turning the locks and removing the chain, he opened it. Stepping out, he stopped and gave her one last look. She hadn't moved. She hadn't turned to see him leave. She hadn't even said good-bye.

There was nothing left to say.

So, Morgan stepped out onto the landing and closed the door behind him. For good.


End file.
